16. `Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you.

17. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them

18. to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'

19. "So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven.

20. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.

21. That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me.

22. But I have had God's help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen--

23. that the Christ [2] would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles."

24. At this point Festus interrupted Paul's defense. "You are out of your mind, Paul!" he shouted. "Your great learning is driving you insane."